Trayvon Martin and the World He Left Behind July 19, 2013

You can find me on FB and I have found a very fine group of FBFs with similar thoughts and opinions as mine. That’s what it’s for isn’t it. So I can be found there – just FYI.

When George Zimmerman was acquitted of the charges against him in Florida for the cold-blooded shooting of an unarmed teen-age boy it made my heart twist and hurt and ache and then I got very angry. You see I was a teen-age girl in the Civil Rights Era and I was nurtured in my feelings by my own father who did not play racism. But he never told me it was going to go away just because MLK Jr. had a dream or because I stocked a “Negro” college in the South with donated books (they had none) or because I sang (off key) Kumbayah. The entrenched ugliness of this country’s relationship to race was far too old and too polarized to make that happen quickly. We felt in 1964 we were making a dent. When I was old enough to know much more about the matter I saw the dent was made in 1865 and destroyed by the name of Jim Crow. In the brief glorious time between 1865 and Jim Crow – the black colleges were founded, black writers wrote, black politicians gave voice to the needs of a whole new group of voters. Freed men and women flocked to find work and education and a better life until they were deemed separate, oh but by the way, equal – just not in white folks domains.

If I didn’t believe that for a second (and I have always known how white folks felt) I believed after Trayvon Martin was murdered by a self declared vigilante with a gun and no reason to shoot. Trayvon had a bag of Skittles, an Arizona ice tea and was walking home while black when George Zimmerman – the poster boy for Big Bullydom, decided to stop him with no cause and no right. And then he shot him – not to scare or wound or threaten but to kill. Bang, bang Trayvon is dead. GZ has the smoking gun in his hand. A few days later (after anyone else would have been charged, jailed and held), GZ was out on the streets, begging for money on the Internet and Trayvon was stone cold and in the morgue. And when at last the trial took placed, six Bingo ladies fell in love with their handsome defendant protector who made sure none of those nasty black thugs in hoodies came into their neighborhoods (armed with Skittles and ice tea) andsaid – no – not our George. He is NOT guilty. And Trayvon is still cold and six feet under and George is a free man.This morning our president, Mr. Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white mother and black father spoke on a subject he has known all his life. Being black and male in America. This is part of what he said:

But in an unusually personal moment, he began talking about the broader context of the case and the need to better understand the experiences of black men in this country.

“I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away,” Obama said. “There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.”

He went on to recount instances when he had heard “the locks click on the doors of cars” as he walked down the street. African-American men are used to getting into an elevator and seeing a fellow passenger “clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off,” he said.

“I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida,” Obama said. “And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.”

This happens every minute of every day somewhere in the land of the free and the home of th slave. It has happened to my godson, to my son’s best friend, to my best friend, to his father – a fire captain. I have been followed while shopping with my best friend – not once in a while – most of the time.

Black folks in this country have earned their anger, their mistrust, their caution and their fear and they have earned it by living while being black. For his blackness Trayvon Martin was shot down in cold blood.

For this single act.

Is every black person a hero or a savior or a man above men? Of course not – no one is any of those things iin any color, faith or gender.

But the law is skewed and it is an ugly system we support with our bigotry and preconceptions. The jurors in any case tried in any court should hear everything that happened – not just the parts they hear. And if GZ walks out a free man for murdering a child because he was black, then that same law should grant blac kmen and women the same benefit. There is no question GZ shot Taryvon Martin. The only part I cannot swallow is why he got away with it.

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You hit the nail on the head. GZ shot to kill with a concealed weapon. Take a look at the state laws across our nation that freely allow concealed weapons and weep. Would Trayvon behaved any differently if he knew GZ had a gun? Quite probably, any sane person would respect the gun. But he didn’t know until it was too late. As far as he knew he was being annoyed and hassled. He didn’t know the extent of GZ’s insanity. GZ needs to learn a lesson. I only hope that what is to follow will result in that lesson being learned.